Monthly Archives: August 2013

Applying to EPIK is certainly a hurry up and wait lifestyle. Especially if you’re American. We have one of the hardest background checks to get. You have to hurry to get documentation out just so it can be in the mail for a while. We hurried to get fingerprinted and re-fingerprinted and re-fingerprinted to the point that we were hurry up and waiting for the background check since January (finally got the approved copy in June!).

Undoubtedly the waiting we are doing right now is the worst. Everything is completely out of our hands. Our recruiter even has nothing to do. We’re all waiting on EPIK and EPIK says we’re on a waiting list. So the waiting we’re doing right now is a calculated waiting, “should we pick a different country?” “do you think we’re waiting for nothing?” “should we start looking at other options in Korea?” The idea of having to do all the paperwork (over $500 worth and 7 months) is a destroying feeling.

Since no one can or will say anything about the statuses of our application we’re just sitting blindly in the dark. As far as we know we could be wasting time to only be rejected. Other countries and other options are closing their applications and we’re just sitting on our hands hoping and waiting for EPIK. This kind of waiting is impossible.

The only thing that makes us feel even remotely better is the ridiculously (possibly unrealistically) hopeful email from our recruiter

You are on a waiting list for recommendation to Education board currently, and Korvia is expecting EPIK HQ to start to recommend you to each education board next week.

Korvia will be able to give you news on the recommendation result by August 14th KST.

Once the board votes yes to you, Korvia will receive the final approval from EPIK.

And after that, EPIK will issue the NOA and the contract and send you in the mail directly via FeDex.

Korvia will do the best we can to deliver good news to you soon.

It seems very unlikely that we’ll be placed for the upcoming intake (arrive for August orientation on the 18 and 19th) although we’ve heard of people getting placed one week before orientation.We’ve heard that the late intake (Sept/Oct) is already full…So we’re just waiting for people to drop out or even to get kicked out during the orientation.

We have been waiting since June 25th- so 6 weeks now and technically we only have to wait one more week. But I will reiterate: this waiting is getting impossible.